Curating everything (Curating as symptom)

20th and 21st of March, 2015

Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Limmatstrasse 270, CH–8005 Zurich
http://www.migrosmuseum.ch                            kunstvermittlung@migrosmuseum.ch

Symposium: Curating everything (Curating as symptom)
Dorothee Richter, Postgraduate Programme in Curating in cooperation with Alena Nawrotzki, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst

Cooperation partners:
Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural Studies, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme, University of Reading, Fine Art Department of Art and Postgraduate Programme in Curating, http://www.curating.org, ICS, ZHdK

Speakers:
Inke Arns, Sebastian Baden, Ursula Biemann, Ellen Blumenstein, Sergio Edelsztein, Felix Ensslin, Frederikke Hansen, Fatima Hellberg, Elke Krasny, Marsha Meskimmon, Katharina Morawek, Dorothee Richter, Axel Wieder

Schedule: (details below)
Friday, March 20th, 1pm–5pm, plus: Exhibition Opening “Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in feminist curatorial thought“, ZHdK, 7pm
Saturday, March 21st, 10am–7:15pm

The ironic title “Curating Everything” proposes already to read the activity of curating as a social symptom. We presume that the contemporary urge for a curatorial position has an imaginary side: the wish to gain authorship and agency as an illusionary closure in an overall unsteady and precarious labour situation for cultural producers.

Undoubtedly CURATING is a new discursive formation, as defined by Michel Foucault, which has rapidly developed since the 1970s. This new profession has as its main tasks the production, the distribution and the reception of cultural meta structures through the combination of cultural products like art works, publications, film or performance programmes, sound projects, digital media or projects in public space, a single project often consists of a media-conglomerate. Also it instituted a now hierarchical formation, when taking over the creative side of organising projects and shows from the self-organisation of artists’ communities in the 60s.

In this conference we put an emphasis on the interrelation of CURATING as a meta-discourse and a cultural production with post-Fordist societies. We would like to discuss curating in relation to changes in image production, to changes of experiences of distance and modes of perception, changes in the conception of subjectivity and communities, changes in ways of circulations of images and changes in digital and material infrastructures. We would like to question curating in respect to topics of race, class and gender.

What can we propose as a critical attitude in curating achieved through ruptures, gaps, inconsistency, failures and dissent? All speakers share an interest in political agendas in artistic and curatorial practices.

Friday, 20th of March, 1–5pm
1–1:45pm  // Dorothee Richter „Curating – politics of knowledge production“
1:45–2:30pm  // Sergio Edelsztein “Are boycotts the new ‘Collective Curating’?”
2:30–2:45pm // Break
2:45–3:30pm  // Sebastian Baden „Terror Worldwide? Curating after the Stockhausen-Syndrome“
3:30–4:15pm // Katharina Morawek “Involvements”
4:15–5pm // Panel „Curating and politics“

Exhibition Opening at ZHdK Gallery, Friday, 7 pm:
“Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in feminist curatorial thought“,
curated by Elke Krasny, with: Aktion Arkiv, Queering Yerevan, radical practices of collective care and Red Min(e)d;
ZHdK Gallery 1 + 2 (E05_5.K09 / E04_4.K13), Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstr. 96, 8005 Zurich

Saturday, 21st of March 10am­–7:15pm
10–11am // Felix Ensslin „Material and Thought: Contemporaneity and The Thing(s) of Curating”
11–11:15am // Panel Introduction/Moderation: Elke Krasny
11:15–12am // Marsha Meskimmon „Feminism’s ‚Curatorial Turn‘: What, Why and Whither?”
12–12:45pm // Frederikke Hansen „The Drive to Remember: Kuratorisk Aktion’s Curatorial Engagement with Invisibilized Coloniality and Indigineity in the Nordic Region and beyond”
12:45pm–1pm // Break
1–1:45pm // Fatima Hellberg „Transformations – or how to deal with affect and method“
1:45–2:30pm // Panel „Feminist Turn in Curating“, moderated by Elke Krasny
2:30–3:30pm // Break
3:30–4:15pm // Axel Wieder „Critical Populism“
4:15–5pm // Ursula Biemann „Making the World Matter“
5–5:45pm // Inke Arns „Curating (in) a Post-digital/Post-media/Post-Internet World”
5:45–6:30pm // Ellen Blumenstein „The Curator and Her Double: The Cruelty of the Avatar“
6:30–7:15pm // Panel „Curating/the public (and digital media)”

Theoretical Outlines
Dorothee Richter
Felix Ensslin

Curating and politics
How does art and curating interfere into the ideological sphere? How to make politics with curating? And what problems does this present?
Jeanne van Heeswijk
Sergio Edelsztein
Sebastian Baden
Katharina Morawek

Feminist Turn in Curating
The panel discusses the implications of a feminist turn in curating. What are the historical legacies of feminism? How do feminist, queer feminist, postcolonial, and critical theories and practices intersect with regard to curating? What are the possible feminist curatorial futures?
Elke Krasny
Marsha Meskimmon
Frederikke Hansen
Fatima Hellberg

Curating / the public (and digital media)
What does the public mean in relation to curating? How to work with publics? And  what does digital media offer in the relation to the new relation of space and time? Anything, anywhere, anytime?
Axel Wieder
Ursula Biemann
Inke Arns
Ellen Blumenstein